The purpose of this thread is to document the progress and productivity of wild pawpaw (Asimina triloba) patches.Anyone and everyone who has pawpaws growing in their area is welcome and encouraged to contribute.

I'll go ahead and get us kicked off:Here in TN, we have had a crazy-warm second half of February. (Also crazy-rainy.) We've actually had a couple of days reach 80 degrees. Have not had any frost in a couple of weeks at least.Bradford Pears and Chinese Magnolias are blooming as of a couple of days ago. Daffodils, etc are up and blooming.Sooooooooo.....are the pawpaws blooming yet?

Last Sunday (2/25) I checked the "mother tree" in Nashville that I always keep an eye on. The flower buds were definitely in action but not open yet. The size of small blueberries. The flower "stem" (peduncle I believe is the term) was quite elongated on most flower buds.This tree has always had early-ripening fruit, so perhaps it's ahead of other trees. I haven't been able to look at my local wild patches yet.

We have some cool nights coming up, forecast around 32F, but I don't see anything that would harm the flowers. Last year we had some 20F nights in March that really zapped things.

Observed some more trees in Nashville area today. Rhodes are in a wooded area. Flowers not nearly as far along as the tree mentioned above. This is good, because we have a few nights below freezing coming up. Regardless, however, nothing severe that would do much damage, I think. Took some more cuttings today. Going to be busy with a lot of grafting later.

Was out at the local patch yesterday. Couldíve been my mood but overall things didnít look so great. Just not a lot of flowers or even flower buds, it seemed. Weather has been unusually cool for the last few weeks with multiple nights below freezing. I think things are rather delayed, compared to some recent years at least. Definitely not in full swing yet. Upcoming weather is still pretty cool and wet for about 2 weeks. At this rate we may not have much flowering for a while. Weíll see....Oh, and other bad news is only a few of my grafts in the patch appear to have made it. Looking at them now I can see I didnít have good technique! I think my biggest issue was I didnít know to rubber band them tightly. So the wound tissue really messed things up- they look awful! LOL

I know i predicted doom and gloom last year and was somewhat wrong (crop was down for sure from 2016 though).

But this year i'm really concerned due to the bizarre weather we've had: freakishly warm late February, then a much colder March overall, and now even in the early days of April we just hit around 30F 2 nights ago and have a sub-30F low predicted Saturday night.Add a fair amount of rain to the mix, and it's hard to envision many flowers being successfully pollinated or even alive.

Thx for writing. I've read a lot about the Paw paw and I wish it would survive and fruit in zone 10.

Yep they're a fun fruit and just an interesting and pretty tree.

I have been super busy this spring and really haven't been out in the woods much. I've been tending my newly planted pawpaw orchard and doing grafts on potted trees, etc.

However, I managed to get out into the big wild patch yesterday...if you've never seen a big patch of wild pawpaws, it's quite a sight. Just something so fairy-land-ish about it. Gorgeous.

I was very happy to find that 3 of my cleft grafts from last spring have survived and have put on growth. I also planted probably 100 seeds in various spots in the woods. I've never planted seeds in the ground, so i'm very keen to see how this goes. I also threw 2 new grafts out there - a Mango and NC-1. I've learned a good bit more about grafting and hope these will take.

There are definitely lots of "freeze-dried" flowers on the trees from all the late freezes this year, BUT i did see a few fruits about the size of grapes. So, perhaps not a total loss this year.

Winter weather in Raleigh was only super cold the first half (got down to 4 degrees) and kinda normal the second half. At least we didn't have the hard freeze like we did in April of 2017. Here on the south side of town the weather has been very dry, ten miles away they are flooding. There are no wild pawpaws in the woods around my house so nothing for me to contribute there. I do have one tree that was won in a raffle that claimed to be a wild variety but now that it is fruiting I think it is just an un-named cultivar and that they meant "native" when they said "wild". All the other pawpaws in the garden are seedlings of named cultivars. One of them is my 'super producer', always making more fruit and larger fruit than all the others. This year, due to the dry weather I am spending a lot of time keeping them watered, so far so good.

Wow, TJ those pics are awesome! Since you mentioned it, yeah I guess technically non-wild pawpaw discussion would be in the Asiminaholics Anonymous thread

Sounds like Iím following your footsteps a bit by doing seedlings of named cultivars (plus some grafts).What varieties were your ďparents?ĒHow do the fruits compare to the parent in terms of flavors, texture, size, etc?Oh, and how many years did they take to produce?The conventional wisdom is seedlings are inferior, but I tend to think that if youíre starting with named cultivars, especially if both parents are named varieties, then youíre probably going to end up with something pretty good. Itís cool that one of your seedlings is so prolific.

Triloba - I don't know the parentage. A local nursery obtained the fruit from a research orchard where all the trees were named varieties. There aren't many wild pawpaws in this area so I doubt any of them crossed with wild plants. The story I heard is that the orchard was multiple acres big so more than likely all the known named varieties were there.

I've tasted a lot of pawpaws and though there are differences, those differences are minor - at least to my palate. I can taste differences in fruit taken from the same branch of the same tree. I think how the fruit is harvested and handled after harvest impacts the flavor more than the variety.

Triloba - I don't know the parentage. A local nursery obtained the fruit from a research orchard where all the trees were named varieties. There aren't many wild pawpaws in this area so I doubt any of them crossed with wild plants. The story I heard is that the orchard was multiple acres big so more than likely all the known named varieties were there.

I've tasted a lot of pawpaws and though there are differences, those differences are minor - at least to my palate. I can taste differences in fruit taken from the same branch of the same tree. I think how the fruit is harvested and handled after harvest impacts the flavor more than the variety.

Very interesting! Thanks for your input. I agree that most of the differences are subtle, but definitely from tasting wild fruit I can say thereís a difference between good and bad

So back to the wild crop updates...... despite the wacky and cold spring weather, looks like the wild crop will actually be pretty good this year.Look at these gorgeous clusters!

I did 3 grafts in the wild this year and so far they're looking really good. Only 3 of my previous years' grafts have survived: PA Golden, Taytwo, and Wells. This year I grafted Mango, NC-1, and Rebecca's Gold.

Wild crop this year isn't looking too shabby. Overall in the few patches I frequent, I would say production will be better than last year.

2 of 3 wild grafts I did this year seem to be successful, and I also tried planting some seeds in the woods for the first time. Varmints dug up a lot of them, but as of a week or so ago, I had 2 successful sprouts coming up. I need to get some chicken wire or something around them if I really want to ensure their survival.

Also I have 2 grafts going strong using scions from 2 wild trees that I selected (1 is possibly a grafted tree of unknown variety). So that's kind of cool. Hope to plant them here in my "orchard" in the spring.

Weíll only one of my wild grafts took after all. Several seeds I planted in woods have come up and have a few leaves. So fun! Who knows how many will survive to maturity.

But the big news is I have my first fruits of the season!I spotted a pawpaw tree in the side yard of a house in town. I knocked on the door and the homeowner had no idea it was a pawpaw tree or even any kind of fruit tree. She was very kind and let me pick a few fruits. They are smallish but better than nothing!